


Where are we now?

by thewatsonbeekeepers



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Drug Use, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pining, Pre-Fall, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29142012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewatsonbeekeepers/pseuds/thewatsonbeekeepers
Summary: John discovers that Sherlock is gay, and everything about his life is thrown into question. With a shadow of unhappiness fallen over his flatmate's past, John is determined to make things right for him - but is in deeper waters than he intended.
Relationships: Greg Lestrade & John Watson, John Watson/Original Character(s), Sherlock Holmes & Greg Lestrade, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/Victor Trevor
Comments: 9
Kudos: 44





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A note to say that there will be reference to suicide and homophobia in this fic! I've kept these to mentions only but I realise that some people may find this upsetting so please do not read on if so! I hope you enjoy this and do leave kudos/comment if you like it! Thanks to @hotshoeagain and @multi-fandomdisaster-deactivated for beta-ing and sorry for taking forever with updates - will send you both more chapters soon xxx

“Come through.” Lestrade beckoned John and Sherlock through the door into the squat room. It was clear that an effort had been made to make it look nice, though John noted, somewhat morosely, that it had failed. It was difficult to make a barracks look homely, he recalled from his time in service, and although not a barracks, this base clearly suffered from the same problem. It went disused for months at a time, Lestrade had explained to them, and had since the Cold War. It was only used now for increasingly infrequent threats from the North Sea, or, like in this case, when Scotland Yard co-opted it to save money in a smuggling case. Sherlock wasn’t normally interested by smugglers – mercenary crime, he called it – but this gang had proven particularly ingenious in evading capture, and so he had been roped into decoding their ciphers to find their next landing point. Lestrade had asked them to stay at the base, deciphering messages that they could intercept via the base’s aerial; John suspected that this didn’t actually require their presence in Scotland, and guessed that Lestrade was being pressured by Mycroft after John had come across a small baggie of cocaine in Sherlock’s possession the previous week. Although the flat would be just as they’d left it when they returned, John knew Mycroft would have combed every inch of it while they were away. He suspected that Sherlock knew this too, but he wasn’t complaining, so John wasn’t going to bring it up.

Being honest with himself, he thought Sherlock was clean anyway. Sherlock had insisted it was just for an experiment, and John believed him; the warning signs that John had grown so good at picking up on weren’t there, the slightly dilated pupils, the mania, the hyperfocus that could send him for days without sleep. He was never in danger of overdose, but there were times when he fuelled himself on microdoses of class A substances – only a doctor would pick up on it, but that’s exactly what John was. So he had felt obliged to text Mycroft all the same, and within half an hour the invite to Scotland had appeared. John had to hand it to Mycroft – when it came to Sherlock, he left nothing to chance.

The evening in the base passed uneventfully; John and Lestrade normally went for pints of a Friday anyway, so it wasn’t much different to their regular weekends. Sherlock was always invited to these sessions but begged off with a variety of excuses; tonight, he zoned in and out of the conversation indiscriminately, sometimes picking up on a train of thought that fascinated him and other times seeming to be a million miles away. His foot tapped back and forth with a restless energy that John knew came from being away from Baker Street; intrepid as he was, he was always slightly uncomfortable in new surroundings, and John watched his eyes flicker as he took in every facet of the base around them. Lestrade clearly noticed this as well and took pity on Sherlock, trying to draw him into the conversation.

“So how did you crack it, Sherlock? The cipher?”

“Simple.”

Lestrade sighed; John marvelled at his patience to have worked with Sherlock for so many years and have never cracked.

“It’s not so simple to me – tell me.”

“It’s an algorithmic cipher; you connect the letter to its numeric place in the alphabet, put it through a function, and then change the number you have back into a letter. The key is the function – if you don’t have it, it’s nearly impossible to crack.”

“But you did.”

“Yes.”

John snorted at the smirk dancing on Sherlock’s lips. He was enjoying taunting Lestrade, if nothing else.

“Right – and how did you do that?”

“A mixture of methods – frequency analysis, geographical and psychological research for keywords, and then trial and error for the algorithm itself –“

“Trial and error? The great Sherlock Holmes uses trial and error?”

The smirk immediately disappeared from Sherlock’s face. “Yes, well. More trial, less error. Unlike when Scotland Yard attempt it.”

Lestrade laughed good-naturedly – he was a little tipsy on the beers that he and John had been drinking, which John knew improved his mood. “Touché.”

“Right.” John got to his feet. It was late, and he wanted to end the evening before the sparkle of Sherlock’s acerbic comments wore off. “To bed with me.”

“Right – now – a fair warning, there’s only one bed for you boys,” Lestrade said as he stood up, stretching. “But the sofa here is a great sofa bed, I slept on it when we were up here the last time we were trying to catch this lot, slept like a log. And the bed in there is a double – a big double, god knows why, a small base like this, but it’s not uncomfortable.”

John was used to all sorts of less-than-ideal sleeping arrangements from the army, so this really didn’t bother him, but Sherlock’s reply to Lestrade was slightly tetchy. “And you’re in the single – why?”

“I’m a snorer,” Lestrade laughed. “You won’t catch a wink with me around. Even across the corridor might be too loud – I hope you’re not light sleepers.”

John hadn’t been able to sleep for a long time since Afghanistan, but since moving into Baker Street he had found his sleep had cycled back to normal. He still had interrupted nights, normally the nights he spent away from home. He looked around the base regretfully, noting that its military style probably meant he would struggle tonight, but there was nothing to be done.

“Thanks Greg – try not to wake us,” he laughed, as he and Sherlock went towards the room. Lestrade had been right – the bed was large, too large for the room, taking up nearly all of it. John snorted; someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get a bed like this in the base. Still, it would serve him well – it looked like a good quality mattress, better than the sort he knew you normally found in these places, so whatever the reasoning of the original proprietor, John thanked him or her.

John briefly went to the bathroom, a tiny, rectangular little room just small enough for him to brush his teeth and change into pyjamas. When he came back, Sherlock was pyjamaed, standing at the door.

“I’ll go to the sofa.”

“Sherlock.” John appreciated Sherlock’s politeness - it was a characteristic that was increasing at a snail’s pace – but it was definitely a bad idea in this situation. “You sleep terribly. You’ll never sleep.”

“Lestrade said it was fine.”

“Lestrade can sleep through anything. You’re a _terrible_ sleeper.”

“I’m not.”

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock bit his lip, and John knew he had won – Sherlock, who frequently woke John up with his midnight ramblings around the flat, couldn’t argue this one.

“Well – I don’t want to make you go to the sofa –“

John sighed, exasperated. “It’s a big bed – you won’t even know I’m there. Get in.”

Sherlock nodded quietly, and rolled onto the far edge of the bed. John noticed that he curled as close to the edge as he could, as though he were trying to take up as little space as possible. His hunched shoulders peeked out from under his neckline; John could see the tension written on them. He sighed and lay down, respectfully close to his own edge in the hope that it would make Sherlock more comfortable. He switched out the light.

“Goodnight.”

Sherlock didn’t respond. John sighed and rolled over.

It normally took John about twenty minutes to get to sleep now that his nightmares had gone, and he reckoned he was certainly at the pleasant haze of the eighteen minute mark when a gravelly voice penetrated his consciousness.

“You’re not asleep.”

“Well _now_ I’m not, Sherlock, no.”

He rolled over so that he was facing Sherlock’s back; Sherlock didn’t seem to have moved since they had first gone to bed. He lay there for a moment, waiting for Sherlock to reply. He had finally accepted that that was it for the evening conversation when Sherlock broke in again.

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine, mate. Get some sleep, yeah?”

“I just didn’t want you to be uncomfortable because you were sharing a bed with, uh –“

John heard a gulp, the dust of the rarely used bed sheets catching in Sherlock’s throat.

“- with, uh, me.”

John sighed. “It’s fine,” he said, and he meant it. “I was in the army, Sherlock – we bunked up all sorts of ways – not like _that_ , you know what I mean. Sharing an incredibly comfortable mattress with my flatmate is hardly the biggest problem in my life.”

Sherlock’s shoulder muscles remained tense, almost as though he was clenching himself to the edge of the bed.

“Don’t stress, Sherlock – this is no different to sharing a bed with anyone else – you still steal the sheets, for one thing.” It was true; Sherlock’s knuckles had tightened around the eiderdown in their tension and had spent the last twenty minutes slowly pulling it over to his side of the bed. For the first time in the conversation, Sherlock let out a low chuckle and released his clenched fists; John was pleased to see some of the tension flow out of his shoulders as well.

“See, there we go – I bet everyone you bunk up with asks for the sheets back.”

John had been attempting to inject a little more humour, to get Sherlock relaxed enough to sleep – when he was wound up like this, John knew that he could stay awake for hours, and John really didn’t relish the thought of Sherlock waking up Lestrade at two in the morning by shooting the wall, as he had done John last Tuesday. Yet instead of lightening the situation, John saw immediately that his comment had done the opposite – if anything, Sherlock’s muscles tautened more than before, and John suddenly realised his misstep.

“Sorry – not that – you don’t have to have – I didn’t mean to assume.” John tripped over his words as he tried to make up for his mistake; normally reasonably tactful, he never seemed to know how to tread when it came to Sherlock’s emotional life. “If you’ve not… shared a bed… with anyone before – that’s okay. You know that’s okay. I was just making a joke. A bad one.”

Sherlock didn’t respond, but his shoulders loosened a tiny bit, and John breathed a sigh of relief. No shooting the walls of the base tonight then. Lestrade could thank him in the morning.

They lay there in silence for a few moments more. Then, just as John was about to close his eyes again and roll over, Sherlock’s voice came quietly through the darkness.

“For what it’s worth, I have.”

John lay in silence, unsure of how to respond, but feeling that he should. This was the most that Sherlock had ever confided in him about his emotional life after two years of knowing him. In the end, he simply mustered an “oh, right.”

He was already kicking himself for the poverty of his response when he heard Sherlock snort from the other side of the bed. John couldn’t help but laugh himself; Sherlock laughing at John’s emotional ineptitude was not something that happened very often. Somehow, it eased his awkwardness, and he found himself asking:

“Did she tell you you stole the sheets too?”

The words were met with a second of silence, and John’s stomach plummeted far more than the occasion warranted; he had a horrible feeling that he had again made a misstep. The beat of silence that elapsed before Sherlock responded seemed to echo around John’s brain for far longer, until finally he heard:

“Yes – _he_ told me I stole the sheets.”

The emphasis was faint but it was unmistakeable. Something fluttered in John’s stomach when Sherlock said those words, a feeling that he couldn’t quite place. Again, he found himself covering his tracks.

“Right – yeah – he. Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. You didn’t know.”

No – he hadn’t known. Yet somehow John had felt that he should; he had been living with Sherlock for the last two years, after all, and there had never been a hint of any of this. He swallowed nervously, noting the dryness in his mouth as he fumbled for what to say. He had never considered himself homophobic, but he was somehow clumsy around sexuality in a way that other people weren’t; although he would never say it aloud, he blamed himself for the way he and Harry had drifted apart when they had been so close as kids. He had never been able to find the right words for what he wanted to say.

Finally – to relieve the tension more than anything else, to show Sherlock that it was fine, it was all fine – he just asked:

“What was his name?”

“Victor Trevor.”

John noted with surprise the warmth that had crept into Sherlock’s voice, a warmth he’d never heard there before. His stomach twisted slightly to hear it. He had never felt further from his flatmate; before tonight, Sherlock had seemed somehow eternal, a constant presence in the Baker Street kitchen or in the taxi cabs of London, merging effortlessly with the landscape of John’s new life. It seemed strange, but John had never properly considered Sherlock’s life before him, though he knew bits from conversations with Mycroft, and it had never bothered him before. But somehow, in the light of that one name, a gulf seemed to open up in the bed between them that pushed Sherlock ever further away.

_I don’t have friends. I’ve just got one._

That was what Sherlock had said to him, and John reflected perhaps that was what was bothering him. Since John had moved into Baker Street, Sherlock’s name had become coupled with his, everywhere they went. Sherlock-and-John. John-and-Sherlock. There were plenty of other John-ands, of course – far too many, really, than John would like. John-and-Sarah. John-and-Janine. John-and-Cassandra. But Sherlock had only had one.

John was surprised to be shaken from his reverie by the gentle sound of Sherlock’s breath as it moved into a regular rhythm, deep cycles of in and out marked by the curvature of his back. John tugged the rapidly disappearing sheet back over himself. He had thought Sherlock would never sleep, but here was he, lying awake. He smiled wryly to himself and rolled over, but it would be a long time before sleep claimed him.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John tries to broach the subject of Victor Trevor further, with limited success.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I completely forgot to mention that this fic will contain references to drug abuse - only mentions but will update the tags! Apologies. Hope you enjoy the second instalment.

John’s only attempt to broach the subject of Victor Trevor the following day had gone poorly. Lestrade had gone, meeting Donovan at the cove to catch the smugglers in the act, whilst Sherlock and John stayed at the base intercepting code. Or rather, Sherlock intercepted the code whilst John made them both tea. The base had a disappointing lack of mugs, so after a quick search John gave it up as a bad job and decanted the tea into two glasses. He had to wait until they had cooled before he could pick them up, time he had spent leaning against the counter thinking about the previous night. He could half-see Sherlock in the other room, poring over papers and scribbling down information as it came in, with two laptops open in front of him, each screen boasting dozens of symbols that John had never seen before in his life. John knew himself to be of reasonable intelligence, but the world of cryptography was very much beyond him.

When the glasses had finally stopped giving off steam, although they were still fogged up above the surface of the liquid, John had picked them up and gone into Sherlock, resolved to find out more about Victor Trevor – and more about Sherlock. He was his best friend, John knew – with absolutely no competition – and if he didn’t know Sherlock, he worried that nobody did. That maybe Sherlock was a lot lonelier than he was letting on.

John pushed the glass of tea over to Sherlock and pulled up a chair. He took a deep breath in and began.

“So –“

“Whatever conversation it is you are attempting to have with me, John, I suggest you abandon it. It will be fruitless.”

John gulped. Sherlock hadn’t even looked up from his laptop, nor had his fingers disengaged from typing in a long line of symbols. “Right. Okay then.”

And that had been it. John had once again been stymied, too clumsy to go any further. Had this been Stamford, or one of his other mates, John would have cut through their crap, made them talk – but you couldn’t do that with Sherlock. So instead he sat there, following Sherlock’s analysis with his eyes until he began to piece it together. Cryptography wasn’t that difficult after all – it was easier, of course, to work it out in hindsight, after Sherlock had broken the code, but John nevertheless got a sense of satisfaction out of it. It was only after about forty-five minutes of code-breaking that he realised that Sherlock was eyeing him.

“You’re breaking the codes.”

“Yeah – well, no. I’m following you, breaking the codes.” He went slightly red at having been caught, although he couldn’t quite pin down why. “I can’t get this one though – I don’t see where the maths –“

“The algorithm.”

“Yeah, the algorithm. I don’t see where it comes from.”

Sherlock’s eyes lit up for the first time all morning, and to John’s delight he launched into an incredibly detailed and borderline incomprehensible explanation, all at breakneck speed. John couldn’t help but smile to see Sherlock so excited about code-breaking – this was, after all, what had drawn him to Sherlock in the first place, that irascible passion that seemed to drive him in his high moments. It was only as Sherlock reached the end of his explanation that he seemed to stumble.

“-which means – which means – which means that Lestrade is in the wrong cove. They’ve foiled him – nearly.”

John was already pulling out his phone and dialling Lestrade’s number. “How long have they got until the boat comes in?”

“It’s landing in about 15 minutes – but they’ll be in the cove for another 20 at least, got to get everything off it. Hurry.”

John frantically relayed this information to Lestrade, who swore profusely on the other end of the phone. John was pretty sure he could hear the same four letter words echo from Donovan, who was standing near the mouthpiece. John couldn’t help but chuckle as he hung up, although he knew Lestrade was far from amused, already running along the rainy beach, desperate not to let the smuggler slip through the fingers of Scotland Yard again.

*

They returned to Baker Street that night, the smugglers caught, and John’s sleeplessness the night before made him excuse himself early to get some shuteye. Sherlock, who had been so surprisingly somnolent the previous night, was titrating what John was pretty sure was a highly illegal poison, and looked like he would be doing it well into the night, so John didn’t feel he would be much missed.

Lying in bed, however, John procrastinated; he was a night owl, and going to bed when he could still see the last rays of light peeking through the curtains didn’t seem right to him, somehow. He took out his laptop and began to mess around, flicking between tabs as he jumped from YouTube video to Wikipedia and back. Neither particularly interested him, but they were better than lying awake. As his interest waned, he found himself staring at the Google homepage, the search bar empty, completely aimless. An impulse seized him, and before he knew what he was doing, he typed in:

_Victor Trevor_

The search was futile; Victor Trevor, as it turned out, was also the name of a Kansas politician, and John only looked at about three articles before giving it up as a bad job. He was about to log out when he thought of another one.

_Victor Trevor Sherlock Holmes_

He didn’t know why – would there be any record of them on the internet? John was always grateful that his years of youthful flings had happened just long enough ago that they had avoided being documented by the internet; Sherlock, who John reckoned was around 30, might have just caught the start of the new generation, depending on when the relationship was. Sherlock had no social media, of course – social media was a truly terrible idea for a detective – but Victor might have.

The first three results were still about the Kansas politician, and the fourth was a news report about Sherlock himself, but John didn’t click on any of them – it was the fifth which had caught his eye. It didn’t have any title other than Myspace. John felt a flutter of hope – he clicked on the link.

He nearly clicked off it immediately, thinking it was irrelevant; it was the Myspace of a woman called Ellen Todd and hadn’t been updated in eight years. The picture the link had sent him to was of two men in a park, and John had nearly dismissed it when the icy blue eyes of the man on the right had caught his eye.

That was _Sherlock_ , John realised. The photograph was from 2002, so it was certainly ten years old. Sherlocks curls were less styled then, instead falling freely in front of his eyes, and he wore a t-shirt, which John had never seen him do. The most striking difference, however, was in his smile; John realised that in the two years since he had known Sherlock, only a handful of times had he given a smile which had reached his eyes. Yet here, Sherlock’s grin was wide, showing his teeth rather than the pursed expression that John was accustomed to, and his eyes crinkled in a way that John knew only indicated genuine joy. It was unlike anything he had ever seen.

His left cheekbone was brushed by the lips of the second man in the photo, whom John could only assume was Victor Trevor. His eyes looked across at Sherlock as though they couldn’t bear to leave his face. John felt a pang as he gazed at the photograph; it didn’t take much of a deducer to tell that this was love. Even Ellen Todd, whoever she was, had been able to tell; the photo was captioned with simply a heart. He wondered wistfully what had happened. He loved the Sherlock he knew – hard on the outside, soft on the inside – but looking at this photo made him realise what he had never quite recognised before. He wasn’t happy. Sherlock wasn’t happy. And, what was worse, John didn’t think he had ever seen him happy.

The revelation was like a punch in the stomach, and he closed out of the tab. He didn’t want to think about it any more.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John talks to Lestrade and Mycroft to try to find out more about Sherlock's past.

Lestrade had made it to the right cove in time to arrest the smuggler, and that was the last cause John had to see him officially for a few weeks; cases from Scotland Yard had hit a dry patch. John still saw him every Friday night without fail, however; he and Lestrade had warmed instantly when they had met two years ago, Lestrade preferring the frank and down-to-earth John to the pretences of many of his contemporaries, and they had begun going to the pub together on a weekly basis. The pub trips had started during Lestrade’s first marital problems, and it seemed to John that Lestrade’s ability to speak unfettered once a week provided a little bit of a crutch for him, which John didn’t mind at all. Sherlock, always invited, had never once taken up the offer. Normally he sniffed and said that the case called – this week, there were no cases, so Sherlock mumbled something about needing to work on a chemistry experiment without John in the flat to knock it over. John was quick to remind him that that had only happened once, although he reflected ruefully that Mrs. Hudson’s ceiling had never recovered. She had yet to notice the small hole he had burned through, which he was grateful for – he knew he would never hear the end of it.

So on Friday night, rebuffed as usual by Sherlock, John went to see Lestrade. John had toyed with mentioning Victor Trevor to Lestrade for a few days; there was a high chance, of course, that Lestrade would know him, or at least know _of_ him, and John was intrigued. The question of Sherlock before John had never come up before, but now asked it lurked at the back of his mind, niggling at him: a different, happier Sherlock. Lestrade was a mate – he wouldn’t mention it to Sherlock, John decided, and resolved to ask him. Ever since he had tried to make conversation about Victor over the code, John had sensed Sherlock’s discomfort with his interest, and so had tried to be covert about it. More than that though, he thought wryly, he was uncomfortable talking to Sherlock about this. He would ask Lestrade to keep mum.

The opportunity came up several beers into their chat, as John knew it only would when his inhibitions were fractionally lowered. Lestrade had finished a rant about his ex-wife, who had taken the children on holiday during his weekend, and there was a lull in the conversation. John took a breath, and then asked him.

“Greg – you ever heard of Victor Trevor?”

“Victor who?”

Not a great start, John had to admit. “Trevor.”

“No – what is he, some kind of actor?”

“No, just – hold on.”

He didn’t know what made him do it, but on an impulse he unlocked his phone and pulled up the picture from his downloads. He had saved it from Ellen Todd’s Myspace page, and somehow it seemed to say much more than he felt words could. He pushed the phone across the table. He saw Lestrade’s eyes narrow as he tried to gauge the photo in the gloomy light of the pub, and then his eyes flicked back up to John, confused – why was he showing him a photo of two men?

“Look closer. The one on the right.”

“Oh my God – that’s _Sherlock_!”

John nodded. “Yeah.”

“Shit.” Lestrade passed the phone back. “He looks… happy.”

John was surprised to find a lump in his throat so just nodded again, swallowing it back down.

Lestrade took another sip of his drink. “I’d always guessed he liked blokes – I mean, look at his hair – but he’s such a machine that I sort of assumed that – I don’t know, he didn’t really care that much?”

John’s stomach fell a little; he hadn’t guessed at all, beyond that first night at Angelo’s when he was still trying to gauge him. He had fallen into Lestrade’s assumption – that Sherlock just wasn’t interested – but even Lestrade had seen what John had missed. Two years of friendship were starting to open up in his mind, the veneer that John had already given them vanishing as the closeness he had always taken for granted was evaporating. Even Lestrade had recognised it.

“So the other bloke – that’s Victor Trevor?”

John nodded. “He mentioned him to me that night we were up in Scotland.” Lestrade raised his eyebrows insinuatingly, clearly remembering the sleeping arrangements. “No – nothing like that. He was awkward though – like he had to tell me, to be fair. Not that it matters, of course. It doesn’t matter to me. But he was awkward about it.”

“And what else did he say?”

John shook his head. “Nothing. He shuts me down every time I try to mention him now. Like it was a moment of weakness.” John omitted to mention that he had only tried to mention Victor once, and that he blamed that as much on his awkwardness as on Sherlock.

“Blimey. How old is he there – twenty?”

“Nineteen.”

“So he breaks up with this boy when he’s nineteen and then – nothing? Must have broke his heart.”

John looked up at Lestrade, slightly relieved. “So there’s been no one since Victor? Not before I moved in to Baker Street?”

Lestrade shook his head. “Not that I know of. Mrs. Hudson might know. But there was never any mention.”

“It’s just – you don’t think he was someone like Moriarty, do you?” Even saying the words that had been weighing on John eased the knot in his stomach. “You know he was obsessed with Sherlock, but you weren’t there with him – it was weird, Greg, it was sexual. You don’t think Victor was… like that. Some kind of psychopath.”

Lestrade pushed the phone back over to John. “You’re overthinking it, mate. Look at that photo. I’ve never seen Sherlock like that with anyone – can you imagine him with Jim Moriarty?” John had to laugh at the thought of Jim replacing Victor in the photograph, and the tension he didn’t realise he had been carrying eased again. “That’s not some weird criminal fetish – that’s young love.”

“Yeah.” John smiled. “Still, though – you couldn’t check him up in the records? Just to make sure?”

Lestrade shook his head. “Absolutely not. More than my job’s worth. I can’t just go checking up on random citizens. Plus – I got a warning for that when I did it with the kids’ new stepdad. _Joseph_. Absolutely nothing wrong with him, more’s the pity.”

John shrugged. “Fair enough. Worth a try.”

“Get him drunk and ask him about it. Sherlock’s a real lightweight.”

John laughed. “Maybe I will,” he said, but he knew he wouldn’t. He was sure Lestrade was joking, but the idea of prising something so personal from Sherlock like that landed badly with him; it felt wrong, somehow. Yet the sight of the photograph that Lestrade had pushed across to him pushed him on – he needed to know more about Victor Trevor, he decided, as he pocketed the phone, maybe do some detective work of his own. But even then, as he settled in to listening to Lestrade’s tirade about his children’s new stepfather, his knowledge of the underhandedness of this approach sank into his stomach like a lead weight.

And so, that night, he found himself on Myspace again. He tried not to stare at the photograph for too long; the photo had a tendency to suck him in, to absorb him in an abyss of dwelling. How hadn’t he known? Not just about Victor – how hadn’t he been able to tell that Sherlock was so unhappy? He didn’t want to think about it, how little he knew about his closest friend. His search of Sherlock Holmes on Myspace returned nothing; Victor Trevor returned nothing either. Ellen Todd, however, had a full account, and John clicked on it to see.

It hadn’t been updated for eight years, since 2004, so it was out of date enough not to be particularly useful for tracing Ellen Todd to the current moment, but he noted the details on her profile. Born 1981, so a year older than Sherlock. She had grown up in Surrey – there were lots of pictures of her running in the country with a dog, which John assumed must be where she lived. Posh country, though she didn’t dress particularly poshly, John noted. Studied at King’s College, Cambridge. John recalled Mycroft once mentioning that Sherlock had been to Cambridge, though he had never spoken about it. John had suspected that it hadn’t been particularly enjoyable. He looked back at the photo; there were no identifying marks of the city, but Sherlock looked like a student – the right age, the right attire, the right… carefreeness.

John took a breath and took a guess. He typed into Google: _victor trevor cambridge._

He had never known Victor Trevor, and yet the results felt like a punch in the stomach.

_Cambridge student dies by suicide._

_Music prodigy Victor Trevor passes away aged 21._

_Do universities have a responsibility for mental wellbeing? Third student suicide this year raises questions._

_Victor Trevor: are we failing our students?_

John swallowed. Whatever he expected, it hadn’t been this. Steeling himself, he clicked through the links slowly. They gave very little information, inevitably John supposed – he hadn’t been a celebrity, he’d just been a kid. He had hanged himself in student accommodation halfway through his final year, John understood. February 2002 – only a week after the photo had been taken. John could not believe that the boy who looked so happy in that photograph had taken his own life just a week later. A week.

Then again, John remembered what it had been like when he had just returned from war. The way others had expected him to slot in, thinking everything was just the same. Not understanding that he was shattered inside. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising.

So what had happened? Had they broken up and then Victor had killed himself? Jesus. But John pushed the thought out of his mind as soon as it had come – that photograph wasn’t of a relationship verging on disaster. So Sherlock had been seeing this man – this boy, really, they had both been boys – and then he had died. John felt his stomach plummet just thinking about it. He had seen more death in his time than most, and had come pretty close to it himself, but this – this was something else. It looked like Trevor had been older than Sherlock, in his last year when Sherlock had been just nineteen. Nineteen. John couldn’t fathom it.

And then, according to Lestrade, there had been no one. Mrs. Hudson didn’t know – she had teased John often enough over the years, but she had never brought it up, and John suspected that she had assumed Sherlock’s sexuality for all these years for the same reasons Lestrade had. Correctly assumed it. Whereas he, John, hadn’t. He pushed the thought out of his mind. Sherlock didn’t seem to speak to Ellen anymore – he couldn’t remember hearing her name in the last two years of their friendship – and, as Sherlock had said to him: _I don’t have friends_. Who would know?

Mycroft. Mycroft would know.

John hated to contact Mycroft. The two of them had kept an uneasy distance ever since their first meeting in an abandoned warehouse, when Mycroft had kidnapped him. He sensed that Mycroft regarded him as a threat to Sherlock, and he thought Mycroft was a pompous prig. Not just that – a bully. John didn’t like the condescension in Mycroft’s tone when he talked to John, but he could deal with that himself – what he really didn’t like was the drawling dismissiveness of his little brother. Yet, John realised, looking back at the photograph, there was more at stake here than John’s dislike for Sherlock’s brother. Victor Trevor had made Sherlock happy, happier than John had ever seen him, and somehow Sherlock had never been happy since.

He gulped. It was nine thirty – still just about an acceptable time to ring someone. He took a breath and dialled.

The pick up was instantaneous. “John? What’s going on?”

“Nothing – nothing’s wrong –“

He was met with a sigh of relief at the end of the phone, and John felt a stab of regret at calling Mycroft this late. He had almost definitely thought that Sherlock was in trouble, or had relapsed. Nevertheless, it strangely mollified John to hear Mycroft’s concern – maybe he wasn’t quite the terrible brother John usually thought him to be. Still, once his fears were allayed, he was as icy as ever.

“Then, might I ask, why are you ringing me at this hour? Or indeed at all?”

“Yeah – listen – I know it’s late. Mycroft, does the name Victor Trevor mean anything to you?”

The silence at the end of the phone was deafening. John held his breath, sensing he had overstepped, feeling like he was in trouble in some way – Mycroft had a way of making you feel that. It was a long time before Mycroft answered.

“Has something happened?”

John swallowed. “No, nothing’s happened – it’s just, Sherlock mentioned him to me, and then I found this photo – Sherlock’s about nineteen, with a guy who must be Victor –“

“I know the photo.”

That wasn’t the response John had expected, but he went with it. “You know the photo. Right. Great.”

“Dr. Watson, I would stay out of this if I were you. Sometimes the past needs to stay buried.”

This was the sort of thing that made John detest Mycroft. “Look. Mycroft. I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye – ever seen eye to eye, maybe. But that photograph – he looks happy. I’ve never seen him like that. I thought I knew him, but I didn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happy. And even the way he said his name. He doesn’t talk like that.”

There was a pause before Mycroft spoke, and John felt somehow that the words were being forced out, like Mycroft was finding this conversation more difficult than John had realised. “I’ve seen my brother’s heart broken once, John. And I helped him through it, and I’d do it again. But I want you to understand this – it was close. You understand me? Sherlock nearly didn’t make it through. I know you have the best of intentions when it comes to my brother, and I respect that. But all these attempts to rake up the past – I nearly lost my brother once. I will not put him in that position again.”

It was as though John had been winded. He could not speak – even had he been able to, he could not think of a thing to say.

“So, Dr. Watson, I’m sorry, but I’m going to ask you to let Victor Trevor’s ghost lie. I hope you understand me.”

He heard a mechanical tone and realised that Mycroft had hung up on him. Of course, he knew Sherlock was hardly stable, and he had spent his fair share of time searching the flat for cocaine stashes to flush, but it had never occurred to him that this had been spurred by something, or indeed that it had gone so far. What made Sherlock such a good junkie was his ability to control himself – control his dosage, control his behaviour – so that he was high-functioning, and so he didn’t get caught. He was never quite enough trouble for anyone but John and a few close friends, who were constantly urging him to get clean. He had always assumed that Mycroft simply let it happen, that provided Sherlock’s dependencies didn’t develop any further Mycroft was happy to let them lie. But what it sounded like now was that Mycroft was simply glad they weren’t what they had been.

John thought of Sherlock, working in the kitchen below him. He wondered whether there was cocaine in the flat, whether he should do another search, even though logically he knew that John finding out this information made Sherlock no more likely to flip out tonight than he had been before John knew. He put his phone down and sat there, simply processing.

And then, once again, on his laptop, he looked at the photo. Even after all Mycroft had said, he still couldn’t shake Sherlock’s carefree smile from his mind.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John decides to try and talk to Sherlock about Victor.

It was months before John worked up an idea of what to do. After everything that Mycroft had said, interfering any further had panicked him; he didn’t want to make things worse, and he certainly didn’t want to push Sherlock back to how he had been.

And yet.

He had not looked at the photograph since that night, and yet Sherlock’s smile was emblazoned onto the back of his mind. Every time Sherlock smiled – which wasn’t often, John was forced to admit – he noted how thin-lipped it was, how the icy blue of his eyes stayed cold from lack of feeling. John wished he did not have such a basis for comparison. It was like having the rug pulled from underneath him, this realisation that their perfect life in Baker Street was a sham and that Sherlock was so terribly, terribly unhappy.

Lestrade had mentioned Victor again to John only once, a few weeks after their first talk. “Did you ever find out what happened with that old boyfriend?” John had told him, and Lestrade had been floored. John could remember word for word what Lestrade had said next. “No wonder he’s like that.” _No wonder he’s like that._ Had anyone else said that, John would have leapt to Sherlock’s defence – he had many abnormalities, sure, but they weren’t _problems_ , they were just Sherlock. But John knew that the things that made the other officers call him _freak_ weren’t what Lestrade was talking about here. Sherlock’s fear of attachment, the arrogant sneer that protected him from being hurt. That was what Lestrade meant. And John had to concede he was right.

It was only on a case, several weeks later again, that John had finally decided to act, however. It was a simple case; a young boy, run away from home, and parents desperate to get him back. Sherlock had to admit that the boy was clever, but a fifteen-year-old’s wits were still no match for Sherlock. The case, however, was not what had struck John, but Sherlock’s response to it. Lestrade had thanked him, and Sherlock had just nodded. There was no joy in his eyes; perhaps it had just not been stimulating enough. John found himself searching Sherlock’s face for a trace of that adrenaline-fuelled mania he was accustomed to, but instead only found the sadness he had never seen before the photograph. And so he decided to act.

Lestrade had suggested talking it out, and though Mycroft had said to do no such thing, John knew from his brief experiences with therapy that that was what one was supposed to do. Therapy had not done anything for John, but his problem, he thought ruefully, had been one quite different. Only Sherlock had been able to fix that – he owed it to Sherlock to do the same.

He picked his moment – a quiet Wednesday evening, a case solved and Sherlock reasonably placid. John had returned from the surgery to smell a stir fry coming from the kitchen; Sherlock was a good cook, although John hated to think of his meals being made in what could only be described as a forensic laboratory. Often he demanded that Sherlock clean up before cooking, or else ate out, but that day he was willing to let it slide. There were more important things to discuss.

“Someone called round this morning, before my shift. Wanted to see you.”

“Oh really?”

It was not true – Ellen Todd had not called around for Sherlock. But John had Googled her to find she was still in London, working in a small consultancy in the North-West, and John thought that Sherlock probably knew that too. It wasn’t an unbelievable lie. And if Sherlock bought it – and if he wanted to see her – well, that could be arranged.

“Yeah, an Ellen. Ellen something. Said she was a friend from uni.”

There was a pregnant pause from the kitchen; John took a deep breath to allay his nerves as Sherlock exited the kitchen into the sitting room.

“No she didn’t.”

“What?”

“Ellen didn’t call around.”

John hadn’t anticipated his bluff to be called so quickly, but he knew Sherlock well enough to know that he was caught. “No. She didn’t.”

“I’ll thank you to stay out of my private life, John.”

The words hit him like a punch in the stomach. His _private life_. Sherlock didn’t have a private life, as far as John knew. They had shared everything for the last two years, even to the point of discomfort on John’s part – he would rather that Sherlock had not accompanied him on several dates, for example. To find that now there was a whole portion of his life that Sherlock would not share with him was strangely gutting.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, Sherlock –“

“Good. Then you can be quiet.” The words were biting, delivered harshly even for Sherlock.

“No – look, Sherlock. I’m trying to help. You’re not happy – you were happy then. I’ve seen it –“

Sherlock froze, and John’s words caught in his throat.

“- I’ve seen it, you smile differently –“

“What do you mean, you’ve seen it?”

John swallowed; surely the consulting detective would understand the impulse towards a Google search or two. “I did some googling, a few weeks ago. She has a Myspace page, Ellen Todd, and there’s a photo of you, you with –“

He was surprised to find that the name would not leave his mouth. It seemed stuck in his larynx, blocking it up. _Victor Trevor_. Sherlock holding him, his lips marking Sherlock’s perfect cheekbone, Sherlock’s crystalline eyes filled with a light that John had never seen. Victor Trevor. A dead man.

“With Victor.”

Sherlock’s words shook John out of his thought. “Um. Yes.”

Sherlock turned and went back into the kitchen. John’s stomach sank as he realised that he was almost definitely trying to hide his face; Sherlock who hated to show emotion, who would not be seen to be affected. He got up and made his way to the kitchen door, to see Sherlock angrily frying vegetables which were blackening by the second, John studiously avoiding wincing from the smell. “Sherlock…”

“She should have deleted that photo. She said she would.”

“You know the photo?”

“Of _course_ I know the photo,” Sherlock spat, still refusing to look at John. “She said she’d take it down. Nobody else was supposed to see it.” He shook the pan so that it sizzled with oil and several blackened peppers jumped over its rim into the flames of the hob. Panic was beginning to take hold in John’s stomach. Mycroft had been right, and he, as usual, had gone wandering blindly into a situation that he knew nothing about. Like a bull in a china shop, making everything worse. “Look, Sherlock. Don’t worry. I’ll delete it from my phone, I won’t mention it again – and I can email her, ask her to take it down if you want –“

“That’s not the point.” Sherlock turned the hob off with such viciousness that John thought the switch would come off in his hands too, then brushed past John as he walked back to the sitting room, making a beeline for his violin.

“I’m not sure that stir fry is edible anymore, Sherlock –“

“I’m not hungry. Get Mrs. Hudson to make you something, or go out. We live in London, for Christ’s sake.”

John was not going out, not for a minute, not whilst Sherlock was so riled. He had not seen Sherlock so distressed for as long as he could remember, but after everything Mycroft had said…

“Sherlock –“

But he was drowned out by a stream of angry Bach, violent semiquavers driving forward in a torrent of anguish that vanished any words from John’s mouth, even had he been able to be heard. John placed himself in his armchair, eyes fixed on Sherlock’s fingers so deftly manipulating the strings. He used to think ruefully of his meagre clarinet ability when he was faced with Sherlock’s musical brilliance, but more recently it had pleased him just to listen, to let the notes wash over him. Even when the music was as violent as tonight, he could never fail to be impressed by Sherlock’s dexterity, and the ability of this unfeeling man to feel the emotional power of every note.

He knew, however, that this was only an interlude, that there was a chance of serious danger tonight. There was no point talking to Sherlock about his drug dependency – John didn’t understand, was what was always hurled at him, like Sherlock was a child suddenly – but John knew that the house needed to be cleaned, and fast. The good thing was that Sherlock had had no time to stockpile, he hadn’t seen this moment coming, but John was always afraid that there was something he had missed. Not so long ago he had come home from the surgery early and caught Wiggins leaving, and had given him such a seeing to that he was pretty sure he would not come back for a long time – he knew so, in fact, because Sherlock had complained about it. John rarely exercised his temper anymore, having it much more under control since the days of his return from war, but some things could still fire it up.

And yet, despite John going through the flat and destroying the few baggies he found tucked away, Sherlock never showed an impulse to leave his violin. When John finally went to bed, strains of Bach still floated up the stairs, through his room and out into the night.


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John decides to find Ellen Todd so that he can find out what really happened with Victor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter talks about suicide - not in any real detail, but look after yourselves if that's something you don't want to read about!

Sherlock was cold to John for the next few days. John saw his motivation – it wasn’t a deliberate rudeness, but a boundary setting. His speech was functional, nothing more, keeping John at arm’s length, telling him he should come no closer. Yet at the same time, John was buoyed by the fact that the danger Mycroft had predicted had not arrived. Sherlock had been upset, and he was reluctant to repeat that, but playing the violin all night was not completely out of the ordinary for Sherlock. He had played the violin all night the night they found out that Irene Adler was alive; the first and only time that John had brought Cassandra back to the flat Sherlock had played the violin non-stop, John recalled. Under normal circumstances, violin would be strangely romantic, but even secluded in the bedroom it had been an awkward reminder of the third party in the flat, and John had gone round to Cassandra’s ever since then. Sherlock, of course, had not commented.

John, however, had not been in the army for nothing. If there was one thing he knew of himself, it was that he was tenacious. And so on Friday he called in sick to the surgery, surprising himself by the lack of guilt he felt in doing it, and made his way via Tube over to North-West London.

He did not know where Ellen Todd lived; he had not been able to find that, though he knew that Sherlock would have been able to. Her firm, however, was easily found. John timed it so that he arrived at Angel just before lunchtime. He needed to catch her when she was free, but not when she was out. It was ten to one on the dot when he entered the reception area.

“Hi there – I’m looking for an Ellen Todd.”

“What’s your name?”

“I don’t have an appointment – I’m an old friend, I was sort of hoping –“

“Oh, here she is. Ellen!”

John froze as a woman who was undeniably Ellen Todd came out of one of the offices. He knew every angle of her face from his evenings of Facebook stalking; seeing her in real life, it suddenly struck him that she was a real person. This was not some kind of game. Hovering in the back of his mind suddenly appeared the thought that stalking someone to their workplace was not in fact an acceptable tactic of approach, and that he should perhaps have opened conversation with an email. Her reality also exploded into his head the reality of Sherlock’s life before him. The photograph was one snapshot from which he had whiled away time imagining this golden trio of posh intellectuals, living the idyll at Cambridge at the same time that John was out fighting in the mud of Afghanistan; for the first time, seeing Ellen, the mist fell away.

“A gentleman here – says he’s a friend –“

Ellen looked at him and nodded. “John Watson.”

Of all her responses, this was the last one John had expected. “Yes.”

“The blogger.”

Right. Of course. She had been friends with Sherlock at university; this Facebook thing worked both ways. If John had managed to find out this much about a consultant, of course she had followed the career of the celebrity detective. “Yeah. That’s me. Um – Ellen, right?”

She nodded.

“I was hoping – maybe we could get lunch?”

She held the door open for him in answer. John nodded awkwardly at the receptionist as a means of thanks, trying to avoid her curious gaze. He left the building, followed by Ellen.

They found themselves at a small sandwich shop, which John guessed Ellen probably frequented daily. A reasonable salary, then, John mused, eating out daily in London. The shop was long and narrow, with the proprietors clearly trying to make the most use of space that they could; John and Ellen found themselves nestled into a booth at a little closer quarters than John would have liked. Ellen wasted no time in starting the conversation, and John quickly outlined why he was there, how he had found the photograph and Sherlock’s response.

“…I just want to see him happy, is all – and I thought you might know something about that.”

Ellen sighed. “In ten years, he’s never spoken to me. I tried, for a long time, but there was no way of getting through to him. I get it – I wouldn’t have spoken to me either – but ten years.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m glad he’s found you though. I was so worried he’d be lonely – he didn’t really have friends at Cambridge, outside of me and Victor –“

“We’re not –“

“No, I know. But friendship is important too. He needed friends when Victor died – he had no one. Mycroft couldn’t provide that – he didn’t know what to do. He’d never faced anything like that before. But you were in Afghanistan – I read it on your blog. I thought you might help.”

John shook his head. “He won’t talk to me. Just plays the violin at me.”

Ellen smiled nostalgically. “He didn’t know the violin until he met Victor. He came up to read natural sciences, mainly chemistry, and science was everything. All art was useless, clutter in the brain, that’s what he used to say. He wouldn’t read fiction, watch films, the works. Victor studied music – he was a music scholar, sang in the choir, played about twelve instruments, the whole thing. Victor taught him. And Sherlock learned quickly – he was a natural. We hated that! We wanted to see him find something difficult. The two of them could duet for hours once Sherlock got really good. He was never as good as Victor, of course. But that pushed him forward.”

John thought back to Sherlock playing the violin that night. Playing alone. The gnawing feeling that had begun when Sherlock had first said the word ‘he’ that night up in Scotland was no longer errant; it was beginning to sit in the pit of his stomach, cutting into him when he least expected it.

“And – well, you know what happened then. Victor killed himself. Sherlock tried to, too. He dropped out of Cambridge and Mycroft set him up somewhere – but by the looks of the internet he didn’t last there very long, he started detecting.”

“I didn’t know he dropped out.”

Ellen looked at John in a slight bewilderment, and once again John found himself cursing himself at again finding just how little he knew about Sherlock Holmes.

“Yeah. He never graduated. He tried to kill himself, and the uni told him he had to take time out, but he convinced them he was safe. They didn’t support him, of course, you can imagine what it was like. And then he tried again, and they told him he had to go.” Jesus. John had not heard any of this. Ten years ago – eight years before he met Sherlock. “And so Mycroft set him up with some government job, something secret, but whatever it was he didn’t want to do it and it didn’t last. The detective stuff took over – and then you.”

Right. Him. The next chapter. It was like Sherlock had drawn a curtain over that part of his life and never wanted to see it again. John couldn’t blame him. He had done the same when it came to Afghanistan; there were things that had happened there that he couldn’t talk about to anyone, didn’t want to. But these days, since Baker Street, he thought about those things less and less. John got the sense, somehow, that Sherlock thought about Victor every day. His stomach felt as though it was being wrung out even just thinking about it. All the things he hadn’t known.

“But what are you here for – why me? You’re here by yourself – so Sherlock doesn’t want to see me.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” John replied honestly. “I thought it was better – it’s like walking on eggshells talking about this, at least for me. I’m way out of my depth, and you’re the first person who’s given me anything like information.”

Ellen laughed. “You don’t get on with Mycroft?” John shook his head. “I didn’t think you would. We got used to him after a while, but he’s an acquired taste. He was really condescending when we were in university. Victor was good with him – but Victor was good with the whole Holmes family. He knew how important it was.”

 _Victor was good with the whole Holmes family_. John compared that to himself, bickering with Mycroft, awkwardly navigating through conversations with a family of brainiacs. Bully for Victor. He must have seemed an odd choice of friend for Sherlock after Victor and Ellen, who John was sure had plenty of brains between them. John had thought he was smart before he met Sherlock and the extended Holmes clan. Some days he had to remind himself – he was a doctor. He was a damn sight brighter and more capable than most. But somehow he felt that, were he still alive, Victor would put him to shame.

“Will you come back to Baker Street?” John asked suddenly. “That’s where we live. See Sherlock again. He’d like it.”

Ellen shook her head. “He wouldn’t.”

“Victor’s not coming back – I know that. But that happiness – you were a part of that too. A proper friendship – he still doesn’t have many, Ellen, and to know you still cared about him after all this time –“

Ellen stood up. “I have to go. My shift starts again in ten. Don’t tell Sherlock you saw me.” She pushed some money towards the centre of the table, more than enough to pay for both her and John, and she was gone, lost in the crowds of London as she pushed her way back up the road to the firm. John knew better than to go after her; his watch told him she still had half an hour left of her lunch break, but she didn’t want to spend it with him. He sighed, and left a few coins on the table as a tip as a waiter eyed him surlily from across the counter. The tube it was then – and back to Baker Street.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A drunk Lestrade calls around to Baker Street and decides to intervene in Sherlock's love life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one - I've had a busy weekend! Bonus points to anyone who can spot the Easter Egg in the setting. Hope you like it :)

“A nice day out?”

Why oh why, John thought to himself, did Sherlock have to have such bloody good deductive powers. Just once in a while, why couldn’t he take a day off work to do some sleuthing without Sherlock spotting it, almost like intuition?

“Yeah. I called in sick to work, had to get some stuff done.”

Sherlock nodded. “Round at Cassandra’s?”

John choked on his water, prompting a fit of coughing. Cassandra. Fuck. His girlfriend. He had been so preoccupied the last few days, he hadn’t messaged her at all. He had opened a message about 48 hours ago, and she was still on seen. He pulled out his phone as he wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

_Hey babe, how’s your day been?_

Seen two days ago. Balls. He quickly typed a reply.

_Sorry Cass, it’s been a crazy couple of days at the surgery. How’s everything going for you?_

It had barely sent when the three dots popped up to suggest she was typing. John grimaced when he saw the response.

_We need to talk. Call me._

He knew she had seen that he had seen it, but John wasn’t about to call her now. He locked his phone and slid it into his back pocket. John knew these signs – he would deal with them later.

“Surgery texting you?”

“Um – yeah.”

“You shouldn’t ignore urgent messages, John. They’ll fire you.”

John hated that Sherlock knew just from his body language that that was what had happened, but at least he thought that it was with the surgery, he reasoned. He still wasn’t completely readable to Sherlock. That was some solace, however; he might not be losing his job, but Cassandra would definitely fire him as her boyfriend after this, or at least be strongly thinking about it. The phone vibrated against his buttock and he grimaced again at the thought of the strongly worded texts he would open later.

“It’s okay. Just Raj wanting me to cover his shift.” If Sherlock noticed the lie, he didn’t indicate it.

“Cassandra’s changed her perfume.”

Of course Sherlock had registered what Cassandra smelled like – John wasn’t sure _he_ knew what perfume Cassandra wore. A different one to Ellen, apparently.

“I suppose – you’ll have to ask her about that.”

“A definite improvement; the old one was hideous.”

John snorted. He hadn’t liked it much himself. “Don’t tell her that.”

“No.”

John sniffed the air; the aroma of shepherd’s pie was wafting towards him from the kitchen. Sherlock was clearly trying to atone for the angry mess of a stir fry the other night; John certainly wouldn’t complain. Sherlock’s parents insisted that his cooking was mediocre at best and certainly not a patch on their dishes (although better than Mycroft), but John couldn’t agree with them; he thought Sherlock had a particular knack.

“You should be careful, John. The most common reason women change their perfume is if they’ve found another man.” Sherlock walked into the sitting room and handed John a steaming bowl of food. “Or indeed woman,” he added as an afterthought.

“I don’t think Cassandra’s bisexual,” John laughed, although painfully aware from the phone in his pocket that whether she was or wasn’t it probably wouldn’t be any business of his soon enough.

“No. Probably not. Although more people are than you think.” Had Victor been bisexual, John wondered? Was it Sherlock’s femininity that had attracted him? Sherlock did have a sort of grace about him that one normally found in women; John had often noticed this in the way he walked and the turn of his head. Victorian curls and cheekbones out of a David Bowie video.

“Makes for a lot of interesting murders,” Sherlock continued. “Love triangles and secrecy. It’s a deadly combination.” John snorted again; on second thoughts, maybe the comment was nothing to do with Victor at all. “My sister’s bisexual,” he contributed.

“Hmm. Let’s hope we don’t have a case on our hands there,” Sherlock responded.

John felt a sudden surge of bravery. “And you’re not…?”

“No,” Sherlock said with a wry smile, and John felt a swooping sense of relief that he hadn’t rejected his question out of hand. “Although being a consulting detective, murders do tend to happen around me for a variety of other reasons. You’ve survived the Semtex though; you’ll be fine.”

The Semtex. John tried not to think too hard about that day. Moriarty pinning him as Sherlock’s pressure point; John being so close to death, at one point willing to die for Sherlock. Those early days of Baker Street had been the strangest, like a whirlwind passing through his life. He looked over and saw a look of distracted anxiety in Sherlock’s eyes and knew that he was thinking about the same moment.

There was a light knock on the door, and John didn’t even have time to ask who it was before Lestrade entered. Sherlock lit up. “A case!”

“Hi Greg, how are you?” said Lestrade sarcastically. “You boys alright?” John nodded, as Lestrade pulled a chair over to the fire to join them. “No case, I’m afraid. I just thought that you boys might be in, and I could do with some company.”

John knew that Lestrade had been taking his divorce harder than he let on. Sherlock, however, did not, it seemed.

“What’s wrong with your flat? Or the pub? Don’t you and John normally see each other at the pub?”

Lestrade looked up dolefully. “My flat’s a bit… empty.”

John frowned. “Weren’t you supposed to have the kids this weekend?”

Lestrade nodded. “Bloody stepdad’s taken them highwiring. What do my kids want to go highwiring for? I could take them highwiring – if they’d said they wanted to go highwiring –“

John patted him on the shoulder. “I’ll get you some dinner.” He moved over to the kitchen – there wasn’t much shepherd’s pie left, so John put it in a small bowl to make it look like a larger helping, though he suspected Lestrade would see through his trick. He brought it back to the sitting room and handed it over. “There you are, Greg.”

“Thanks.” Lestrade began to tuck in furiously, confirming John’s suspicion that Sherlock’s cooking was a lot better than the Holmeses let on. “What were you boys talking about there?”

John’s eyes met Sherlock; neither of them wanted to mention that day with the Semtex. It was something traumatic, something they rarely talked about – yet something intimate, at the same time. John recalled being trapped in the swimming pool, recalled Sherlock’s rapid haste in removing the Semtex from him, his fingers urgent yet gentle in unhooking him. When Moriarty had first brought John out, his eyes had locked with Sherlock’s, and an unspoken message had passed between them: _I will save you_. Moriarty had hated that; it was John Sherlock had been looking at, communicating with, not the consulting criminal with all the power in his hands. John sometimes wondered if that was what had driven Moriarty to return with his snipers. _Sorry boys… I’m_ so _changeable._ It was like saying: _Look at me, Sherlock. Look at me. Think only of me._

“Bisexuals,” John blurted, to distract from the Semtex. Lestrade raised an eyebrow. “Not like that. More love triangles, more secrecy – more murders. That’s what Sherlock was saying.”

“Research suggests that over 40% of bisexual people in the UK remain closeted in some way. Coupled with the obvious increase in overlapping jealousies. It’s a natural conclusion.”

Lestrade laughed. “Right.” John’s phone buzzed uncomfortably in his pocket – an incoming call. He took it out to turn it off, but the action was spotted by Sherlock.

“You should really answer him.”

“He’s a pain.”

Sherlock shrugged. Lestrade looked questioningly over at John between mouthfuls, but John did not respond and Lestrade seemed happy to leave it at that. John didn’t want to talk himself any deeper into a hole than he had to; he knew how easily Sherlock could read his body language when he lied.

“Are you a bisexual, Sherlock?” Lestrade asked. It was not unfriendly, but characteristically abrupt.

Sherlock looked exasperated. “No – why is everybody asking me this today? If this is prompted by some kind of mid-life crisis –“

Lestrade burst out laughing. “Christ – not at all. Just curious. We’ve been mates for so long and sometimes I feel I hardly know you.” It was barely perceptible, but John saw Sherlock tense up at the word ‘mates’, like it was somehow foreign to him.

“You know Sherlock. Nice and private,” John said, leaning over to fill Lestrade’s glass with water and smelling a touch of alcohol on his breath. Ah. John suspected that Baker Street had not been Lestrade’s first stop after the news about his children. He filled up Sherlock’s glass too, and Sherlock put it to his mouth, drinking to hide his embarrassment.

“A bit too private if you ask me – when are we going to get this man a boyfriend?”

Sherlock choked on his drink, spitting water out across the table and spluttering everywhere. John pursed his lips tightly to hide his laughter.

“Tinder? Grindr? That’s the gay one, right? I don’t know, what do the kids use these days?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Sherlock, his cheeks turning a shade of deep beetroot that spread across his face right to the roots of his hair.

“Grindr. That’s the gay one,” John said.

“Right then – let’s make this man a Grindr. Where’s his phone?”

“No – “ Sherlock made a grab for the phone, but it was closer to John, and with a twinkle in his eye he handed it over to Lestrade. What harm could it do? It took Lestrade a minute to download the app from the Play Store whilst Sherlock hummed and hawed in the corner, a vicious purple still colouring his cheeks. When it was ready, Lestrade opened it up.

“Name – Sherlock Holmes. No, you’re a detective, we need something more cryptic. Don’t need criminals finding you on this. SH. Sam Hines.”

Sherlock shook his head, although John could see that even he was trying to suppress a laugh as the drunk Lestrade moved forward, John helping him, himself intoxicated with Lestrade’s laughter.

“Sam Hines – right. Age.”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Thirty,” John supplied. “Your mum told me when you wouldn’t,” he offered as an explanation when Sherlock looked outraged. This was true – John had wanted to know so he could celebrate with Sherlock, though it had ended up being low-key after Sherlock protested; he did not like big events. The two of them had stayed in and watched a film. It had been lovely, John remembered.

“Location – we’ll just put London. That’s massive. You could be anywhere.”

“Grindr has a location tracker,” Sherlock reminded them.

“Cancel GPS – where’s the button –“

John found it for him – even in this moment of absurdity, he was not blind to the dangers of a consulting detective being GPS monitored, let alone by a sex app.

“Bio – this is the bit where you say what kind of a guy you’re into, right? Age range, height, interests, whatever it is.”

John’s intake of breath was sharper than he had intended it to be. He covered it with a cough as Lestrade glanced his way. He knew what sort of guy Sherlock was into – Victor. Tall, blonde, a pretty boy just like Sherlock himself. Brainy, artistic. John could not help but feel woefully inadequate.

“So – what’s your type, Sherlock?”

Sherlock took a breath in, and for a moment it seemed as though he was going to say, but as he moved to speak his eyes met John’s. John held his ice-blue gaze for a fraction of a second, registering the openness, the vulnerability, that flitted across Sherlock’s face. Sherlock swallowed and turned back to Lestrade, shaking his head. He could not seem to find it in himself to speak.

Lestrade, thankfully, did not seem fazed, or even to have noticed his friends’ eye contact. Yet as Sherlock pulled his gaze away, John felt his heart suddenly pumping in his chest, loud enough that he could hear the blood pulsing through his eardrums. He had not felt this way in a long time, this magnetic connection to one human. He wondered whether Sherlock had read the emotions in his eyes; he was not sure what there had been to read.

“Right, no bio – what about interests? Brainy, violinist – we can’t say you’re a detective, obviously – I’ll say you’re a chemist. And photo –“ Lestrade snapped a picture of Sherlock as he lifted his hands in front of his face, resulting in a strange blur. “That’ll do. And you’re live! Thank me later.” He laughed, and John laughed too, perhaps more loudly than was necessary. “Now we scroll – do you want to scroll with us Sherlock? Or will we pick them out for you? Because I don’t think John and I will be very good at this…”

“You two can scroll that asinine app – I’m having nothing to do with it,” Sherlock responded. “Though I question what your ex-wife would say if she knew you spent the night inebriated and on Grindr.” Lestrade laughed heartily in response – John wished he had the confidence of the drunk inspector – and began scrolling. It was amusing, John had to admit, trying to find someone who would suit Sherlock in any way, largely because such a thing was impossible. Grindr was famously skin deep, and Sherlock was more cerebral than superficial. Many people put violent kinks in their bios; John and Lestrade found these amusing, but scrolled on. One seemed to have misspelled London, which they didn’t take as a good sign. Most of these men looked as though they would crush Sherlock; the dozens of bodybuilders that seemed to populate the app would be hilarious beside his slender delicacy. John scrolled on. It truly seemed as though there was nothing when –

“Mingwei. Five minutes away,” Lestrade said. “Not trying to be funny, Sherlock, but this one actually looks right up your street.”

John laughed – was anybody on this app right up Sherlock’s street? – but he felt his stomach sink as he read the bio Lestrade was holding up. _Mingwei, 26. PhD student. Looking for someone fun to talk to who doesn’t mind nerding out on occasion. No bodybuilders thx._ It didn’t tell you much, but John knew that it was enough for Lestrade to swipe.

“It’s a strangely wholesome profile, compared to most of the stuff you get on here. Plus, he’s a PhD student,” Lestrade said. Sherlock made a vaguely exasperated noise. “Just because you never got a PhD,” Lestrade teased. “He might be cleverer than you.”

“What’s his in?” Sherlock asked.

Lestrade shook his head. “It doesn’t say. I’ll message him.”

“Five minutes away. Probably studies at Imperial – or UCL. Imperial takes on more PhD students – greater capacity – so he’s probably a scientist of some description. They don’t really do the humanities there.”

“Maths,” said Lestrade.

“Could be.”

“No, it is. I’m messaging him.”

John could feel the blood drain from his face as Sherlock turned a pale green. “Messaging him?”

“It could be worth it – he’s only two minutes away. You’re in with a shot, I reckon.”

Sherlock swallowed, his Adam’s apple hovering uncomfortably in his throat. John looked away, biting the inside of his cheeks, determined to return to normality. “You should try it, Sherlock.”

“Do you think?”

“Yeah. Why not.” He could not meet Sherlock’s eyes when he said it; he wondered if he had noticed, or if Sherlock had even looked at him as he said it. Just thinking about it felt like a poison spreading through his veins, his stomach turning into a sea of discomfort. This was how it worked, this was what people did. It was what _John_ did. But somehow, when Sherlock did it, it was different.

“Right then,” said Sherlock, and John thought he detected a tinge of acid in his voice. He did not, however, look up to see if it was corroborated in his eyes. “I’ll go. Where is he, Lestrade?”

“North Gower Street. He says he’ll meet you outside the sandwich shop.”

“It’s closed this time of night. What is he, some kind of idiot?” John could not help the words slipping out.

“No, he’s a PhD student,” Lestrade smirked. “Besides, maybe he lives above it. Maybe Sherlock could get lucky.”

John felt another wave of nausea spill over him. Those weren’t words he had thought he would hear tonight – would ever hear. His eyes set to the floor, he watched Sherlock’s feet as he pulled himself into a standing position.

“Are you sure?” Sherlock asked. His voice was strained, and John felt as though he was actually asking him for permission. A permission that, however much he wanted to, John knew he had no right to deny him.

“Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Go right ahead.” The words that came out of John’s mouth were alien to him, sounding as though they were spoken by somebody totally foreign to him. They hung in the air for a moment. Sherlock paused in the centre of the room as though taking them in, dissecting and digesting them. John felt the air around them swell with all the pregnancy of the things he did not know how to say.

“Alright then.”

John had not really believed it would happen. But as he watched, eyes still downwardly fixed, he saw Sherlock’s lightly polished brogues step towards the doorway, his coat curling around his ankles as he placed it over his shoulders. John watched him every step as he descended the stairs, until finally he was out of sight.

“Well. Who would have thought?”

John looked over. He had almost forgotten Lestrade’s presence. He pulled his face into a smile that he suspected looked a bit more like a grimace, and poured himself a touch more alcohol.

“He owes it to you,” John forced out with a laugh, but Lestrade was barely listening.

“My head,” he groaned. “It’s only early in the night – John, I’m going to regret this tomorrow.”

So am I, thought John. So am I.


End file.
